Tuesday, May 2, 2017

USA UP ALL NIGHT WEEK: LAND OF THE MINOTAUR AKA DEVIL'S MEN

Land of the Minotaur Directed by Kostas Karagiannis, Starring Donald Pleasance (1976).

Anytime I see the Crown (Royal) International car decal logo I get nervous and feel like I need to be heavily medicated or smashed beyond comprehension to enjoy the preceding film. Some of the titles that have impressed me over the years from that company are Don’t Answer the Phone, Blood Mania, Deathrow Gameshow (which is gonna be reviewed this week), Malibu Beach (which Vinegar Syndrome is putting out soon), 9 Deaths of the Ninja, Jocks, The Lurkers (which kind of sucked) and I have yet to watch Galaxina all the way through.

That's when I reach for the bottle

OK, let me stop the review and grab a beer before I chicken out! So far, this opening is amazing, we’ve got Peter Cushing and a sect of multi-colored hooded satanic Klansmen leading the sacrifice of two hippies underneath a giant fire snorting statue or “The Minotaur”. The tripped-out moaning, combined with mellotron by Brian Eno of all people is pretty unsettling! And we’ve got Mr. DP or Donald “Pewooma man” Pleasance as a knit cap wearing pontiff. All the plucky youngsters have that unkempt 70’s look and they all seem to respect this dude. This flick was on USA UP ALL NIGHT and was even mentioned on the Avclub, that site has been pretty lackluster lately but after decades of shifting writers it has to eventually suffer.

One dude in the trio looks a lot like Barry Gibb (or Charles Manson) and another--stop the presses, needle scratch noise, holy shit! It turns out this flick is Greek and features many of the cast from Island of Death including the guy who pisses on that blonde women (Chuck Berry R.I.P.) and the pee gobbler herself Jessica Dublin, who sadly just died but man, what a legacy! Robert Behling the pee guy, who I guess I could also call the goat or sister fucker plays Donald's fictional son. Man--now Michael Myers is coming off looking like a well-behaved crossing guard compared to that psycho!

The hippies camp out Woodstock style but so far, no fucked up shit occurs. They walk around the Athenian ruins and get trapped in the basement seen in the prologue. The horned beast speaks to them in an eerie shrill voice. Cushing bumps into the hot pants blonde and mentions something about Pagans, which reminds me of how the old deformed curmudgeon from the Greasy Strangler keeps mentioning that he's not the title character or is in a Minotaur worshiping devil cult!

I'm gonna dunk this hot dog into a pit of lard and nobody can stop me.

The quality of this film is pretty crude but it's strangely fascinating. One dude with black eyebrows and white hair resembles 70's Charlie Rich and is a sucky driver. In Devil’s Men the uncut version, we get to see more than we’d probably want “behind closed doors”, you know what I mean. They do a couple of those Giallo fast zoom ins, possibly for the trailer.

this letter from John Denver reads "Fuck you Bitch, You Ain't Country!"

The storyline is pretty sloppy, maybe they spilled some gritty Fage yogurt or hummus on the pages and they got cemented together. Jessica Dublin, the urine fetish lady tries to pull the new characters in to tell them a secret but they don't follow her, maybe they know what she's up too!

she prepared our dinner too, I hope that doesn't skeeve you out.

Some Klansman scares the shit outta another blonde played by Luan Peters from Twins of Evil and The Flesh and Blood Show, she faints in the bath and her privates are obscured by soap (in the uncut version we see more skin). Once they arrive at the altar, we really get to see she's smuggling missiles in that outfit. The pee bitch annoys one of the underground creeps in police clothes (who’s in the underground cult loose in the town). There's a statue that looks exactly like He-man’s battle axe. They recycle Peter Cushing laughing a bunch of times as we see the captured goofballs from the beginning and it kind of book ends that way. Maybe they relied on that repetitious footage after he got on a plane over to the set of Star Wars. I still have yet to see Rouge One but all I've heard so far is they used a CGI "Cush" and that's just some creepy Videodrome style manipulating corpses for corporate gain and profit. Paul Williams, not the "Good Paul Williams" we all know and love from Phantom of The Paradise or the later Planet of the Apes sequels does a trippy, psychedelic fuzzed out tune. See link here. It takes a very potent combo or barbituates, booze and screaming yellow zonkers to endure this one, go for the Gusto!